NL 208: A Kingdom Divided

image: wikimedia [Public domain]

Rebroadcast.

Original aired October 27, 2019

1 Kings 12:1-17, 25-29

Initial Thoughts

  • Last week David was declared king and united the 12 tribes of Israel as one Kingdom

  • This week the Kingdom falls apart  - what happened?

    • Solomon was unfaithful-chapters 9-11

    • Explicitly:

      • He was unfaithful to God by building temples to other Gods

      • He married foriegn brides and built temples to foreign Gods

      • He did not do this out of devotion to his wives (remember he had 700 wives and 300 concubines)

    • Perhaps implicitly:

      • He also used slave labor to build the temple of God...God who brought the enslaved Hebrews out of Egypt

      • What began as prosperity for all “Judah and Israel lived in safety...all under their own vines and fig trees” (1 Kings 2:25 and Hamilton) devolves into systems of oppression and forces labor (1 Kings 9:15)

  • We cannot tell today’s story without telling Solomon’s story - specifically look at 1 Kings 9

    • God renews his promise to David through Solomon - IF - Solomon will keep God's statutes and worship only God (9:1-5)

    • BUT - if they do not worship God alone and follow God’s statues, then they will be cast out of the land and the temple will be come a ruin to warn all others what happened when Israel had “forsaken the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt.”

    • v. 10 makes is clear that Solomon built 2 houses - one for God and one for himself - this is the beginning of Solomon’s downfall - Solomon’s first false God is himself - is Solomon.

    • In order to preserve his power Solomon enslaves the non-Israelites to build the Temple and his palace and the rest of his Kingdom...just like Pharoah.

    • Solomon’s power has corrupted him fully

Bible Study

  • Jeroboam

    • Read 1 Kings 11:26-40

    • Jeroboam was incharge of the slaves who rebuilt the wall of David

    • Jeroboam hears from the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite who tells him he, Jeroboam, will be king of the Northern 10 tribes because Solomon has been unfaithful

    • Solomon somehow hears about this and want to kill Jeroboam - Jeroboam flees to Egypt until Solomon dies

  • Rehoboam is Solomon’s son

    • Coronated at Shechem which is modern day Nablus in the northern West Bank

  • The Fall of the Kingdom

    • God’s plan- as outlined in 1 Kings 11

    • Also Rehoboam’s foolishness

  • The Northern Tribes request

    • Reasonable and patient request (v. 4 and 9) of the Northern tribes who have been oppressed by Solomon

    • Older men

      • according to the Hebrew syntax in v.6, stood up to Solomon (Richard Nelson, Interpretation: 1 and 2 Kings) also push back on Rehoboam beseeching his to be a servant to the people - calls back to David and kings as Shepherds of the people. 

      • He must be a servant in order to be served - sounds familiar

      • Rehoboam asks the old men- how he should respond and they say “to speak with good words” which is the language of covenants and treaties - it affirms the relationship (Nelson, Interpretation: 1 and 2 Kings)

    • Young men

      • Rehoboam asks what he should say (not how he should respond) and he unites himself with the young advisors saying, “what should we answer..”

      • The answers are stupid rhyming slogans which are both sadistic (scorpions) and obscene (little finger comment actually refers to penis size)

      • “Leaders always need wisdom from people more experienced in the community, as well as from God. When leaders only listen to those who say what they want to hear, those who are too timid to speak the truth, or those without maturity and wisdom, they will soon find vultures hanging about their doors, waiting to devour the spoils” (Africa Study Bible, notes page 497)

    • The rhyming slogan of the young advisors are responded to in a poetic response from the 10 tribes in v. 16

      • The line of David has broken covenant with them and they no longer share in David’s inheritance

      • To your tents is a call back to a time before the building of cities and the unification of the 12 tribes as a single kingdom

      • Look to your own house is both call to the King to mind his own business and also a call for the King to care for his own massive infrastructure which his father built and now he and the southern tribes must care for

  • vv. 18-24 Rehoboam flees and find faith

    • When the Israelites rise up against the Slave master, Rehoboam flees south to Jerusalem

    • There he summons the armies of the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin, presumably to attack the northern tribes, but God, through Shemaiah, tells him not to take arms against the northern tribes. 

    • Rehoboam “heeded the word of the LORD” - this is important - finally the king is faithful

  • vv.25-29 Contrast - Jeroboam is VERY unfaithful

    • Worried about keeping the center of worship in Jerusalem where Rehoboam is king, he sets up two new worship centers at Bethel in the south ( a little north of Jerusalem) and Dan in the North (North of the Sea of Galilee).

      • “Jeroboam clearly understands what Josiah in the seventh century BCE will understand, that possession of a cultic center is also a claim to centralized political authority. Thus he takes steps to create cultic places in the north” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, v. II, p. 486)

    • Build 2 golden calves the emblem of unfaithfulness and declares these calves are the ones who brought them out of Egypt...setting up the Northern tribe to be apostates who have violated the laws of God

      • Solomon and Rehoboam strayed and sinned against God and treated the people poorly, but at least they didn’t bring back worship of not one, but 2 Golden calves as well as violating all sorts of Deuteronomistic laws

      • History repeating itself: “He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”” Exodus 32:4

      • “It is important for the Deuteronomistic writer to establish that the first king of Israel… initiated idolatry in his realm, thus setting the stage for the eventual destruction of the Northern Kingdom.” (Alter, p. 487)

  • Jeroboam and Rehoboam

    • Great role reversal - Jeroboam is supposed to be King (1 Kings 11) but end sup fleeing for his life and Rehoboam is crowned King, but then Jeroboam returns and Rehoboam flees for his life while Jeroboam is crowned king

Thoughts

  • “Perhaps Christians who are too willing to provide religious legitimacy to an oppressive status quo ought to take the first part of this story to heart (vv. 1–20). Perhaps Christians who uncritically offer the church’s blessing to all liberation movements need to remember the rest of the story (vv. 21–32). Neither group dare forget that, in the final analysis, God’s sovereign will is being worked out in these historical struggles (v. 15).” Nelson, Interpretation: 1 and 2 Kings

  • There is much that can be explored in these stories about systems - family systems, political systems, institutional systems, and theological systems. Systems Theory suggests that the way a system is set up is going to have long-lasting repercussions. The Unified Kingdom fell apart because of David’s failures, even though it was unified when he died. The Northern Kingdom was doomed to fail by its very creation. Patterns created by the founders of a system are often repeated. Churches clearly are systems, and are affected not only by today’s leaders, but by the system that was put in place before the current leaders arrived.

Year 2Eric Fistler1 Kings1 Comment